Is there a risk in setting up what would likely be the first one-party controlled government in Albany since 1974, and the first one-party Democratic controlled state government since the 30s? Obviously, because so may people are scared about it. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver certainly prefers having a Republican Senate. Hell, he probably prefers having a Republican governor. Being the only Democrat in Albany’s iron-triangle makes you the “go-to guy”. ... Since a Democratic Governor seems a near certainty next year, Silver has acknowledged this reality, but still prefers to be controlling Democratic legislative power all by himself. ...But what Silver is really afraid of is not only a loss of power, but the acquisition of accountability. With a one party government in Albany, everyone will know exactly who to blame. In divided government, pesky interest groups can be placated with “one-house bills”, a shrug of the shoulders, and promises of better days to come. One party government means a time where the chickens will come home to roost, and payback will be a bitch. Suddenly, a lot of folks are going to expect all those poorly drafted, poorly conceived, “one-house bills” to be enacted into law. For the most part, this won’t happen, because it can’t happen; but a lot of people rue the day when they are called to account for this....Mario Cuomo and his gang used to have a wonderful road-show. The Governor and his minions used to give a set speech outlining the Governor’s utopian vision of a shining city on a hill. No matter what the problem, the Governor had a program. Yes, none of those programs had ever been implemented, but that was the fault of those evil Senate Republicans. And, in fact, when given the opportunity to help elect Senate Democrats, Mario Cuomo cannot be accused of sitting on his ample campaign chest and doing nothing; he, in fact, was notorious for finding opportunities for going into the districts of vulnerable Senate Republican and finding reason to praise them in front of cameras and the working press.

Today, the Times does a postmortem on Democrats' failure, in fact, to take back the New York State Senate, including this notable paragraph.

Democrats did relatively little to try to take the Senate. They put some of their star power behind their State Senate candidates — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Spitzer stumped for Ms. Stewart-Cousins — but did little to share the wealth that poured into the campaign coffers at the top of the ticket. Republicans, by contrast, raised money at a furious clip for their Senate candidates.

The New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee raised more than $7 million this year, taking in more than $1 million in the past two weeks. The Democrats raised less than $2 million for their campaign committee this year, according to campaign finance reports filed with the State Board of Elections.

$833,599.60 That's how much cash the New York DSCC has on hand as of their last filing. It's 5 days out from a once in a generation cycle and they are sitting on close to million freakin' bucks. The scuttlebutt I hear is that they are saving money for the next cycle. No, really. You read that right. They are hoarding for the future.

As they say, you find a party's priorities by following the money.

Now, the immediate ramifications are that New York's problems and debt continue to be kicked down the road, perhaps until Spitzer decides to run for President in 2012. We can probably expect no serious reform of the education spending formulas that so drastically shortchange New York City, nor any real help in clearing the MTA's dangerously mounting maintenance backlog. As importantly, though, in an overwhelmingly Democratic state where three Republican Congressmen eked out victories of less than 5 percent (and two more won by less than 15 percent), Democrats have not fought to control the next redistricting process.

The Republicans will control the New York state Senate for one reason only, and for the reason they have in the past, because New York Democratic politicians want them too. There was enough of a Democratic wave this year that the Dem- Senate leader elect had to all but announced this. This stuff is getting blatant enough that the usually incumbent friendly NY Times called on voters to vote for Republicans for the State Assembly and for Democrats for the State Senate.

A Republican state Senate gives the Democrats a good enough excuse to continue business as usual in New York. The problem is, this isn't 1913 (when the legislature impeached and removed a reform-minded governor) when this was one of the wealthiest jurisdictions in the world and could tolerate some graft. Modern day New York is a combination of a city no one can afford to live in and an upstate where no one can find jobs.

We are probably four years away from a collapse of the state tax base. Until then, we pretty much got the State Senate the Dem NY establishment wanted. Its a contrast from the federal House where enough progressive and populists got swept in to at least make things interesting for the next two years.

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Best of Left Behinds

Ten Worst Americans Our group effort at coming up with the ten worst Americans of all time is our most heavily trafficked page. It's linked on many other sites as an example of "extreme leftist propaganda", but I (Solomon) am just happy to be getting the word out about number two on the list.

George Pataki, You Will Never Be President, So Stop Pataki's latest bout of pandering to the national right wing provokes AO to assess Pataki's viability as a presidential candidate. Sample: "In summary, you are dumb, uncharismatic, middlingly competent at best, not politically savvy, and somewhere between homely and plain."

Frank Gehry to Brooklyn: Drop Dead SG reviews Gehry's design for the Atlantic Yards project, concluding that "It's like some giant grey Transformer clomped its foot down on Park Slope. And imagine when in a few years all those pristine white beams get coated in soot from the neverending traffic jams that are projected as a direct result of this development (have you ever tried to drive through Flatbush or Atlantic during rush hour or on a weekend?). It'll be a Transformer's giant grey dirty foot."

Androphilia is the New Gay Didn't we learn anything from the pointless "queer" debates of the early 90s? SG gets all bitchy discussing butchness and some blogger's anti-gay gay neologism.

Why It Matters To Be Rational Part I and Part II In two excellent posts drawing on research from his day job, AO argues that the US is allocating our collective resources irrationally because of badly misjudged relative risks. "Terrorism is for the most part extremely unlikely ... Global warming, on the other hand, is 100% likely (it is already underway), and if left unchecked its damage will almost certainly dwarf September 11." Yet "the same people who believe in ghosts and ESP believe terrorists are gonna bomb their mini-mall. People cannot distinguish between real threats and fantasy."

The Science of Cuteness Think about a kitten staring up at you and cocking its little head as it blinks its big sleepy eyes. If you didn't just barf a little bit in your mouth, you're not trying hard enough to contradict the results of this study.

NYC Police Surveillance In this dispatch from the front lines (subsequently used by the Gotham Gazette), a Brooklyn activist discusses how years of police surveillance and harrassment almost succeeded in demoralizing her. Almost.

The War on Empiricism In a prelude to the risk posts above, AO argues that more people believe in haunted houses than in the scientific method. Somewhere in this post there must be some Dick Cheney jokes.

Why I am a Liberal, or, Napkins are a Stupid Place to Make Government Policy AO and the Congressional Budget Office force small-government conservatives to "defend low taxation on its merits: either taxes and government are evil and immoral in themselves (the idea the right-wing noise machine has been trying to cram down our throats for 25 years or so), or in utilitarian terms less government and lower taxes benefits everyone more than high taxes and more government."

Left Behinds Gets Spanked Our greatest honor of 2005 was a takedown in the very popular MILBlogging.com, where the man behind the milblogs (a man who SG had called "unnecessary and annoying" in a previous post) noted graciously that LB "looks like some third-grade school project written by some Marilyn Manson-looking blogger named Solomon Grundy, a childhood friend of Cindy Sheehan, and a few other contributors." And that was just in his first paragraph. But by the end of the bashing we were not just friends, we were lovers.